Word: parts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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President Bush, for his part, has declared money launderers a critical target in the war on drugs, allocating $15 million to launch a counteroffensive. While the sum is minuscule for the task, the declaration signals a change in philosophy for the Administration, which had resisted calls for tighter banking regulations. Only hours after Bush unveiled his antidrug offensive last September, a federal task force began taking shape. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) hopes to zero in on money launderers with computer programs capable of spotting suspicious movements of electronic money...
...makes enforcement so difficult is a financial murkiness that has long frustrated tax collectors as they search for dirty money afloat in the world's oceans of legitimate payments. The multibillion-dollar flow of black money, the profits from criminal enterprise, moves through the world's financial institutions as part of a vastly larger quantity of gray money, as bankers call it. This dubious, laundered cash amounts to an estimated $1 trillion or more each year. Often legitimately earned, this money has an endless variety of sources: an Argentine businessman who dodges currency-control laws to get his savings...
...money-laundering process, especially in the drug trade, begins with greenbacks. Much of the cash simply leaves the U.S. in luggage, since departing travelers are rarely searched. Larger shipments are flown out on private planes or packed in seagoing freight containers, which are almost never inspected. That explains, in part, why U.S. officials are unable to locate fully 80% of all the bills printed by the Treasury. Once overseas, the cash is easy to funnel into black markets, especially in unstable economies where the dollar is the favored underground currency...
...popularized secret banking. Countries may not yet be willing to make their banking transactions fully "transparent," but some light must be shed on everyone's books. Says Kerry: "It will take significant leverage and leadership. The President has to have the top bankers in and say, 'Unless you are part of the solution, you are part of the problem...
...Bush left Europe. Quayle uttered anachronistic noises to the Washington Post, including a nostalgic reference to the Soviet Union as a "totalitarian state." If Quayle's partial retraction a few days later -- he changed the description to "authoritarian" -- seemed to blur the Administration's view even more, that was part of the game. Behind the scenes, White House officials reminded conservatives that the overtures to the Soviets were extremely popular. "The big question is, Can we break 80% in our approval rating?" said a West Wing aide only half jokingly...